Wesley the Owl

I just finished an interesting book called “Wesley the Owl” by Stacey O’Brien (Free Press). Stacey was a biologist at Caltech and adopted a four-day-old baby barn owl with a damaged nerve in its wing (thus, the owl was unreleasable). She raised “Wesley” as a pet and discovered all kinds of barn owl behaviors and communications. O’Brien has both a tender heart and a scientist’s eye. If you like wildlife, you’ll enjoy this book.

But what really caught my interest was a paragraph toward the end of the book:

“The years I spent in labs and lectures and reading textbooks deepened my view that the universe is a place of wonder and meaning.

Science has many many thrilling discoveries, but along the way it has also opened up myriad, endlessly branching questions. It’s like we are scrabbling in hard dirt with our hands, trying to reach China, and have barely broken the surface. Many scientists consider the idea that there may be something more that science will never be able to explain.

At Caltech, a sizeable group of physicists felt this way, some with Nobel Prizes. The more they gazed into the vast stretches of the universe, or the vast empty spaces within atoms, the more wonder they felt. They formed a group that met once a week to discuss the spiritual side of their experiences.”